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[–] ratsmack ago 

Are you saying that those Gender Studies degrees don't produce anything?

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[–] Niggardly_Jew 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

OK true, but they do increase productivity. Of course where this should be applied is in the home, so you can produce more children, but the economy (in terms of wealth) should still improve if they work in the private sector.

Also, they probably don't half wages.

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[–] BlackSheepBrouhaha 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

It depends how you measure/define productivity. They do increase a nation's GDP, but that's largely do to increased consumption from debt laden wage workers. If a worker goes into debt to sustain herself, her productivity is negative. She becomes a mechanism to transfer wealth between productive individuals, so in that sense she is productive by extracting liquidity from creditors to producers, but she herself is not productive.

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[–] Niggardly_Jew ago 

They were consumers before they were workers. They don't start consuming because they got a job, lol.

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[–] AnotherRedditRefugee ago 

Its true some of the numbers in the post were not accurate, as if the day that women won the right to work they all got jobs, etc. I wish the op would have spent more time smoothing this rough edge out, but the overall point is sound, women in the workplace is bad for wages and that's bad for everyone.

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[–] Niggardly_Jew ago 

No. Wrong. Wages go down, yes that is true, but productivity goes up at the same time.

For example, if you are building cars, you have people in the factories operating the machines that manufacture the cars. If you double the number of workers, you will be able to produce more cars (let's say 1.8x as many cars, because even though the factory is operating twice as often, the workers (women) aren't as effective and make more mistakes). The increase in car supply causes a decrease in the cost. So even though wages decrease (about .55x, the lower value labor doesn't quite decrease wages to half because they're just not as valuable), you are able to buy as much with it. Because of the power of markets (in this example, because not every family needs two cars, the price of a car will decrease to .50x) it actually will decrease the cost more than the wages are decreased: purchasing power increases, because with a days wages you can afford more cars than you could before, even though the actual dollar amount you're being paid is lower.

Low wages are only bad if the price of goods does not decrease to match. The reason that is occurring is not due to labor, its due to inflation (money itself decreases value), which is driven by the federal reserve, and a bloated regulatory governing body which stops competition from being able to challenge the existing car manufacturers. Thus, because you are paid in money and not cars, your wages decrease relative to the price of goods, decreasing your purchasing power.